In the art of athletic training and therapeutic treatment, the concept of proprioception, or the awareness of the relative position of one's body parts in relation to each other, has been used to teach athletes and patients to recognize and correct body positioning. A related concept also used to teach body position and movement is kinesthetic awareness, or the awareness of movement as a body part moves along a path. Proprioception and kinesthetic awareness are essentially feedback mechanisms; that is, as the body changes position, information about the position and movement is exchanged with the brain. Adjustments can be made based on the transmitted information so that the athlete or patient can learn to position a body part to a predetermined position or move along a predetermined pattern of movement.
Physical therapists, for example, use the concepts of kinesthetic awareness and proprioception to teach body awareness and positioning. Proprioception is unconscious initially, but can be enhanced with training. Specialized sensory receptors in the muscles, joints and connective tissues enable the body to process information from a variety of stimuli, and turn that information into action. Through awareness and cognitive processing of a body's position in space, the central nervous system and sensory receptors can be conditioned to be more responsive to length and tension in the muscles and tendons.
A user can condition the central nervous system and sensory receptors to be more responsive to environmental stimuli through activities that require coordination, balance, agility and movements that challenge a user's normal range of motion. The concept of conditioning the central nervous system and sensory receptors is called proprioceptive adaptation and through training, users can become increasingly aware of their movements.
The current invention allows practitioners to create a spectrum of simple to complex challenges utilizing all of the characteristics required for propriceptive adaption: balance, coordination, agility, power and range of motion. The invention allows a user to increase body positioning awareness and combines balance, strength and quickness that result in a user's heightened ability to make instant decisions about what their capabilities are in non-simulated situations.